Supreme Court Backs Reynolds : Jurisprudence: Justice Stevens upholds athlete's right to compete in the 400, and colleagues on the bench affirm. Qualifying races for the men's 400 meters are postponed until today.

By JULIE CART

June 21, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

NEW ORLEANS — The controversy surrounding Butch Reynolds, which appeared to be settled Friday night, unraveled again Saturday when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the suspended runner could compete at the U.S. Olympic trials.

Justice John Paul Stevens reversed an appeals court ruling made Friday, and Reynolds, who is serving a two-year ban for alleged drug use, was free to run in the first round of Saturday’s 400-meter preliminaries.

But because of the chaos that followed the court’s decision, the much-awaited race was postponed twice and rescheduled for today at 10 a.m. PDT.

Whether any athletes will step to the starting line is another question. A majority of the 31 other runners entered in the race said they would refuse to run against Reynolds, who is considered ineligible by the international governing organization and U.S. Olympic Committee.

Reynolds told a meeting of athletes Saturday that if they didn’t run, he wouldn’t run.

The decision by the Supreme Court to let Stevens’ ruling stand is a landmark in the high court’s history. Twice before the Supreme Court has ruled on Olympic issues: in 1984 it addressed the use of the Olympic rings for commercial purposes, and in 1986 it restricted use of the word “Olympics” unless permission was given.

Never before had the court made a decision affecting Olympic competition. It is a precedent that concerns the U.S. Olympic Committee.

USOC President Harvey Schiller, who was here Saturday, said: “We’ve got to be careful that we don’t allow the selection of our Olympic team by court order.”

At issue for the runners was the threat of bans. The International Amateur Athletic Federation, track’s international governing body, has threatened to ban any athlete who runs against Reynolds, citing its “contamination” rule, which prohibits ineligible athletes from competing.

The IAAF has moved to ban nine athletes who competed against Reynolds earlier this season.

IAAF General Secretary Istvan Gyulai said Friday that if Reynolds runs in the trials, his ban could be extended four additional years and any runner in the race could face a four-year suspension.

That prospect left the 400-meter runners an agonizing decision: to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team they must run the race; if they run the race, they face a suspension that would not only prevent them from running in the Barcelona Games in August, but could exclude them from the Olympic trials for the 1996 Games.

Reynolds’ participation in the Olympics is considered moot because the IAAF and the U.S. Olympic Committee have ruled him ineligible. Reynolds’ ban expires three days after the end of the Barcelona Olympics.

A spokesman for the USOC said Saturday, however, that it would fight any attempt by the IAAF to prevent eligible American athletes from competing in the Games, a possibility if any runners compete against Reynolds.

But so questionable was the participation of any athletes that by Saturday night TAC officials were acknowledging the possibility that the United States would send no male 400-meter runners to the Olympic Games. American runners won all three medals in the event at the 1988 Games.

Reynolds, 28, was suspended by the IAAF two years ago after allegedly failing a drug test in a meet in Monte Carlo Aug. 12. Reynolds has been fighting the ban for 21 months and was given the right to run here by a U.S. Federal Court judge Friday.

However TAC appealed the decision to the U.S. District Court in the 6th Circuit. That judge ruled Friday evening that Reynolds’ participation represented a threat to the other runners and reversed the lower court.

Because of the tenacity with which Reynolds has fought his suspension, it came as a surprise when Reynolds’ attorneys said Friday night that they would not take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mimi Dane, one of Reynolds’ attorneys in Columbus, Ohio, said the decision late Friday night not to appeal to the Supreme Court was made out of frustration and fatigue.

“Last night we were despondent and exhausted,” she said Saturday. “None of us could sleep very well last night.”

Dane said another of Reynolds’ attorneys called her at 6:30 Saturday morning, saying they should petition the Supreme Court. Dane agreed and called Reynolds at 8 a.m. He enthusiastically agreed to fight.

Dane said the basis of their appeal was the IAAF’s threat.

“It can’t be true that threats of an international organization can be the sole basis for denying an athlete his rights,” she said.

Reynolds’ brief was filed with Justice Stevens at 9:15 PDT. At 11:05 a.m. Stevens issued his opinion.

Stevens, too, focused on the threat. He found that the appellate court’s decision was swayed by the IAAF threat, which he termed “arbitrary and erroneous.”

Stevens wrote of the “incomparable importance of winning a gold medal at the Olympic Games” and that monetary damages Reynolds might receive from a lawsuit against the IAAF are “not an adequate substitute for the intangible values for which the world’s greatest athletes compete.”

Lawyers for The Athletics Congress responded to Stevens’ ruling by petitioning the entire Supreme Court for a reversal, which the court denied.

After the ruling TAC President Frank Greenberg said TAC would make no effort to prevent Ryenolds from running.

“We’re an organization in the U.S., and we will abide by the orders of the U.S. court,” he said.

It was another day of confusion for athletes and officials. At one point, the executive committee of TAC discussed voting to boycott the Olympic Games, although it was unlikely that such a vote would have passed.

Athletes were most the confused.

Runners who reported for the 400 were told only 10 minutes before the race that it would be postponed until 3 p.m. PDT. TAC arranged for a meeting of all 32 runners and their representatives. The meeting was heated and inconclusive, as Greenberg polled the runners to determine when and if they would run.

Most said no, despite a plea from Reynolds for solidarity.

TAC rescheduled the race for 5 p.m., but when the athletes complained they didn’t have sufficient warmup time, the race was changed a third time, to today.

The 400 competition consists of four heats run in the first round and four total races over three days.

* CHRONOLOGY

A look at the sequence of events that led to Saturday’s rulings. C4